Reactions to the death of infants and children in premodern Muslim societies: children in Marʿi Ibn Yusuf’s plague and consolation treatises

Issues relating to infant and child mortality are essential to the history of childhood in any given society. Mortality rates and the causes of death reveal some of the environmental, social, and cultural conditions under which children lived in the past. In addition, adult reactions to a child's death mirror to a great extent the prevailing image of living children, including gender differences, as well as parent-child relationships. This chapter is dedicated to two relatively late examples of Arabic writings which initially were compiled by medieval Muslim scholars to help believers cope, on the theological, practical, and emotional levels, with the plague and its tragic consequences. The scholar at the center of this chapter relies heavily on old Arabic sources, mostly from the seventh through the tenth century. Mar?i Ibn Yusuf is, probably, the only scholar born, reared, and educated in Palestine who contributed to these genres. The chapter draws attention to his legacy.